Indigenous Women in Mining Australia Launch
24th October 2018
The Gallery was delighted to host the inaugural launch attended by approximately 50 Indigenous women from the industry in Brisbane.
Florence Drummond is passionate about bringing indigenous women together.
She’s standing on a picturesque beach in Far North Queensland, near Weipa, while I chat to her about the initiative she is creating for indigenous women. It’s called ‘Indigenous Women in Mining Australia’ and it has a bold, but incredibly important goal; to connect every indigenous woman working in the mining industry in Australia.
“For the greater good, we need to come together and say; ‘hey, let’s really be together on this, have a solid front on this where we can be an example for our women coming up and have support for all of them.
“I spoke with one woman in Rockhampton and she couldn’t believe that there was another indigenous woman in the industry. That was when I knew that this was really important.”
Florence and her sister, who is a co-founder of the initiative and has been helping Florence put it together, are working towards an event in October called ‘Discovering Indigenous Women in Mining’, that will be an introduction to the grassroots movement. On the day, Florence and other leaders in the sector will talk to the audience about the movement and the importance of coming together and supporting each other, before an hour of networking that will allow women to begin building connections with each other.
“I think connection with each other will give us the opportunity to really enhance our relationships as women.” Florence tells me. “Our intention of creating this space is to be the peak body for indigenous women in mining in Australia. We’re really trying to create a space where we can all come together and then help with other issues as well that are prominent in indigenous communities. Those being domestic violence, consent, sexual violence, drug abuse, gambling addiction and all other things that we need to talk about.
“I think within the next 6-12 months we really want to establish ourselves as a space where indigenous women in the mining and resource women can come together and contribute to ideas, movements, workshops and events that they think will be effective in their community and their workplace.”
As part of the initiative that Florence is putting together, she has made some pledges to Women & Leadership Australia’s #100daysforchange campaign. The initiative encourages individuals and organisations to take proactive steps and actions to advance gender equality in the workplace- which is exactly what Florence is doing.
Story supplied by Women & Leadership Australia
